The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1887-09-24
THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION.
People Who Cannot Agree as to the Best
Means of Remedying Present Defects.

The meeting of the Maryland Farmers Conven-
ton in Baltimore last week showed that great
difference of opinion exists as to the best means Of
remedying the present defects in the tax laws,
the propriety of taxing mortgages and other prop
erty, &C. Referring to this meeting of the con-
vention the San says:
"There is no doubt that our Maryland farmers
feel the burden of taxation to be in many instances
a grievious one, and if it could be ameliorated in
any way there is no body of men that better de-
serve such relief than the hard-working, poorly
renumerated, yet conservative, farmers OF Mary
land. They have suffered, and still suffer, in many
ways They have to struggle with the COMPETE
ton of the grain producers of the West, and their
condition in many respects is not unlike that of
the English farmers, who have been reduced al
most to bankruptcy from the same cause. The
whole agricultural business of Southern Maryland
was dislocated by the war, and the farmers have
never recovered from the losses then sustained
1t naturally also strikes them as an anomaly that
while they are called upon to pay taxes on their
property up to the limit of its assessed value the
great railroads should be measurably exempt from
taxation, not only in their plant, but in their
buildings. It is true that this exemption as far
as it is legal was the act of their representatives
in the Legislature, but they feel nevertheless, that
it is a grievance from which they now suffer-
Whether the remedies proposed in the report of
the committee are practicable is quite another
matter. Of course it is desirable to get all the
taxes from railroads that can be legitimately en-
forced, and that do not handicap them in their
competition with other roads, or cripple them in
their operations But the committee seems to
have laid the greatest stress on taxing mortgages
This vexed question has been brought before the
Legislature year after year, as far back as we
remember, and so great has been the diversity of
opinion expressed with regard to it that nothing
has been DONE The same diversity of views was
manifested at the meeting on Wednesday. The,
report also proposed the adoption of an income
tax. Well, we had graduated income tax dur
ing the war, and the effect of it was so demoraz-
ing that it was speedily abandoned. Another
proposition, carrying with it the same objections
and provocative of similar evasOns and false
swearing, was that the Legislature should cause
to be prepared system of blanks for yearly re-
turns of property and investments and that every
person owning property or securities of any kind
should be required to fill up the blanks and make
a return of their possessions to the collector under
oath. That all property legitimately subject to
but no law, however stringent looking to the dis
covery of that property in the manner proposed
would ever be enforced. To some of the other
recommendations such an annual revision of
the tax list and correction of valuations upon
the principles now used in most Of the States no
valid objection could be made. But the system Of
taxation as proposed by the committee is so crude
and so imperfect that the members present could
not agree upon it themselves and let the matter 60
over until next December as unfinished business